Chapter 3

Ron rubbed his belly as he headed up to bed. Dinner was great. Of course, every meal at Hogwarts was great. Almost as great as his mother's cooking. He was satisfied with his meal that evening and even more satisfied with his snacks. It was rather late now though and all he wanted was to sleep. He would have been to bed earlier except Hermione had refused to look over his essay until he redid it on parchment that didn't look like "it went for a romp in the mud with a crumple horned snorkack" to quote her (and you knew she was disgusted if she resorted to using Luna's alleged imaginary creatures). He couldn't help it if his chocolate frog was too close to the fire and had started melting by the time he was ready to eat it. And of course if his biscuit crumbs got stuck in the chocolate what could he do about that? He conveniently forgot about the oil stains and crumbs from the pasty and the huge red stain from the blood pop (Which he would never be having again! Blech! He didn't know how vampires stomached it.)

He noticed his dorm mates were all asleep already. Not surprising given how long it took him to redo the essay, plus Harry had gone to bed rather early. He was surprised though at the fact that Harry had finished his essay so quickly. Usually the two of them would be straggling behind and getting scolded by Hermione for not starting it earlier. He felt rather lonely being the only one getting scolded. Misery loved company after all.

He got changed for bed and brushed his teeth. Flopping down wearily on his bed he endeavoured to find a comfortable position. Soon he was napping.

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Harry was having a rather pleasant dream. Hermione had invited him on a picnic and they were sitting under a tree near the lake. She was wearing a pretty blue sundress and her eyes were sparkling with laughter. "Say ahhh Harry," dream Hermione said, coming closer as she tried to feed him a piece of cake. "Ahhh" said Harry, closing his eyes and opening his mouth obediently, feeling ecstatic at his luck. After waiting excitedly for a minute with nothing happening he started to feel foolish. "Hermione?" he said, opening his eyes. But there was no Hermione there. Instead, in her place was Draco. "Malfoy!" he screeched, scrabbling backwards quickly to put some distance between them. Malfoy looked almost hurt. "What's the matter Harrykins?" he said, pouting, "You don't want any treacle tart? I made it myself too. Come on now, open up." Draco started coming towards him, a treacle tart in hand. Harry's eyes rolled back into his head in a dead faint.

He abruptly woke up in his bed, his heart racing from fright. "What a nightmare," he mumbled, before turning over and trying to fall back asleep. He only hoped he had no more dreams. He did have occlumency with Snape to dread the next day after all. He'd need all the sleep he could get.

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A few days later

"Well done Mr. Potter," said Professor McGonagall, returning his essay, "I expect that you'll keep up the good work, yes?" He nodded, feeling the tips of his ears turning hot from the rare praise.

"No way!" said Ron, his partner for the day's lesson in changing toads to tomatoes, "How'd you get an O mate? I didn't even get an A!"

Hermione perked up at that. "You got an O Harry?" she said, looking over his shoulder from behind, where she sat with her own partner, Neville. A proud grin stretched across her face. "That's marvellous! I knew you had it in you," she said, before turning back to help Neville catch his floating, red, and decidedly not-a-tomato, toad.

Harry smiled to himself, his face the shade of Neville's toad. His happiness was short lived however, as he absentmindedly tried to transfigure his own toad. An audible pop was heard and the class gasped as Harry suddenly found himself without a partner.

In his daze he was unprepared for the toad to hop away, as such his spell bypassed it completely, hitting his unfortunate companion, Ron. Left on Ron's seat was a rather large tomato.

"Ahhh what's happened to me?!" said the tomato.

"It can talk!" squealed Lavender Brown.

"Just great," sighed Harry. He should have known his day was going too good to be true.

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"I'm sorry Ron!" Harry cried, pleading with his best friend for forgiveness as they made their way back to the common room.

By some stroke of luck, Professor McGonagall did not give him detention. She didn't even take points, only let him off with a stern warning about focusing on his task after she turned Ron back to himself. The objective of the lesson after all, was to transfigure a living being into a tomato. He'd managed to accomplish it, even if that animal turned out to be Ron instead of their toad. In fact, human transfiguration was supposed to be way above his skill level so the fact that he managed it slightly impressed the professor, who wouldn't let him know it of course.

Ron was much less impressed.

It had been two days since the incident and he had not spoken to Harry since.

He turned to Harry, before they could give the fat lady the password. "Look mate, I know it was an accident, but now everyone is calling me Ronmato!" His face, did not need transfiguring to turn tomato red.

Ronmato was obviously still embarrassed by his stint as produce.

"Yes, well, the twins started that one, it wasn't my fault!" Harry said defensively, trying to hide his guilt at calling him Ronmato, even if it was only in his head.

"No maybe not, but it is your fault that I'm having nightmares about being turned into salsa and eaten!" Ron said vehemently.

He gave the fat lady the password and stomped inside.

Harry followed quickly.

"What can I do to make it up to you?" he asked as an idea struck. "Listen, I'll buy you a month's supply of chocolate frogs, how about that?"

Ron stopped his stomping.

Harry knew appealing to Ron's stomach would interest him.

Ron turned to look at him. "Fine," he acquiesced, "But you also have to get me some sugar quills."

"Okay, done," Harry said, relieved to finally have his best friend on speaking terms with him again.

"Good you're both here," Hermione said, coming through the portrait hole, "I've been meaning to talk some sense into you."

"It's okay Hermione," Harry pre-empted, "We're all good now."

"Oh. Well, that's good then," she said, slightly taken aback. She'd expected Ron to be angry for at least another week. His temper was a thing to behold after all.

"Yes, it is good," said Harry, pleased that for once he and Ron could resolve their issues without dragging Hermione into it. He felt very mature.

"Right. Good," she said, trailing off as they both just stood there looking at each other.

"Yes yes, we get it! Everything is good! Can we go have dinner now?" Ron said, interrupting their stare down, slightly impatient. They broke out of their stupor, and Ron thought they looked more tomato-like than him.

"Ah dinner, yes, sounds good," Hermione said, and she turned and scurried out of the common room without waiting for them.

He'd forgotten because of the whole Ron-gets-turned-into-food thing but now that he was over it he recalled his friend's strange behaviour the past couple weeks. It must be contagious, he thought, because now Hermione was also acting weird in addition to Harry. Ron hoped he didn't start acting weird too, he thought, as he noticed Harry just staring at Hermione's retreating form.

"Well shall we mate?" he said, clapping Harry on the back.

"Um yeah, dinner sounds great," Harry said, and with a dazed look he let Ron lead him out of the portrait hole.